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Jury convicts 3 in Bruno mob hit

Saturday, April 02, 2011

By STEPHANIE BARRY

sbarry@repub.com

NEW YORK - Jurors in the federal court trial here for two
Western Massachusetts mob enforcers delivered swift guilty
verdicts on Friday after three weeks of testimony,
guaranteeing three defendants life sentences.

The panel found Fotios "Freddy" Geas, 44, of West
Springfield, Mass., his brother Ty Geas, 39, of Westfield,
Mass., along with the onetime acting boss of the Genovese
crime family, Arthur "Artie" Nigro, 66, of Bronx,
N.Y., guilty of murder, the attempted murder of New York
union official Frank Dadabo, racketeering, extortion and
other crimes.

The jury's decision caps a seven-year saga since
Springfield, Mass., crime boss Adolfo "Big Al"
Bruno was gunned down in a stunning public execution in the
parking lot of an Italian social club in late 2003.

Bruno's slaying came just weeks after longtime street
thug Gary D. Westerman, of Springfield, had disappeared
without a trace. Westerman's remains were ultimately
recovered in an 8-foot grave in a wooded lot where he had
been shot and bludgeoned to death by the Geases and two
co-conspirators, the jury found.

Nigro and the Geases also were convicted of a wide-ranging
conspiracy to murder Bruno to pave the way for a younger,
more volatile organized crime guard in Western
Massachusetts.

The Bruno hit and Westerman's grisly murder were part
of what federal prosecutor Elie Honig told jurors was
"an epic spasm of violence" that peaked in 2003
and opened the field for more aggressive shakedowns of
business owners in Greater Springfield.

At the forefront of the power play was budding mob capo
Anthony J. Arillotta, 42, of Springfield, who quickly turned
on the Geases, his former "scare guys," and Nigro,
the boss who formally inducted him into the Genovese family
in 2003, after his indictment and arrest last year.

Arillotta's blandly-delivered testimony was the stuff of screenplays, with details of elaborate rub-out schemes - some successful and others not - grisly murders and attempted murders in broad daylight and the secret ceremony in which he became a "made man" in the Bronx. He told jurors he was required to strip down to nothing but a robe and swear his oath of allegiance to the Genovese family after offering his trigger finger up to be pricked for blood....